The words a physio says slowly. 21 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Estudiantes de Caracas have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Estudiantes de Caracas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Daniel Machis is living that version at Estudiantes de Caracas, and it tends to show in the first month.
Marked 8.29 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Victor Rosales reports back to Estudiantes de Caracas with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
4 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Yeferson Casseres is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Warm-up bib, ninety minutes of watching, and a handshake at the end that fooled nobody. Big matches tell you who a manager trusts; this one told Yeferson Casseres.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Estudiantes de Caracas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Position 3, 20 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Juan Augusto Mosquera is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Ítalo Sulbarán has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Marked 8.26. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Estudiantes de Caracas.
In brief
Player ratingsDiego Machis was on a different afternoon to everybody else
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Estudiantes de Caracas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Nobody at Estudiantes de Caracas will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.